money

Boom mobile money service helps spread the wealth

Boom isn't your everyday mobile banking service.

While much of the attention in mobile payments has focused on affluent smartphone-wielding consumers and their top-tier banks, m-Via has gone the opposite route. The company has built Boom as a service almost entirely devoted to the migrant worker population in the U.S., allowing them to easily set up a bank account they can access on their phone, and use the account to send money back home.

M-Via is tapping into a largely unnoticed, but extremely large segment of the population with its Boom service. The company charges a flat $25 … Read more

This is what dying software looks like: Quicken 2012

Every year, Intuit releases a new version of Quicken. Most years, I interview some honcho at Intuit who's running the personal finance division and we talk about where the category is going. The meetings got a lot more interesting a few years ago, when Mint threw a monkey wrench into the personal finance software market, which led to Intuit acquiring Mint and bringing in its CEO, Aaron Patzer, to re-light the Quicken product line. (You can download Quicken Premier, Quicken Home Business, and Quicken Deluxe from CNET Download.com.)

Patzer came in with grand visions and ideas to make … Read more

The 404 913: Where Jill and the Amazon Kindle are on Fire (podcast)

The Rev. Justin Yu is out for the rest of the week, but in his place we have the always informative financial guru Jill Schlesinger. Today we talk about the new Amazon Kindle Fire, and how it changes everything in the tablet market (especially for Google). But we also quiz Aunt Jill about the ongoing crisis in Europe, and she tells us about the sugary grab bag at the News & Documentary Emmys.

The 404 Digest for Episode 913

Amazon's new Kindle Fire Amazon Kindle Touch Amazon Kindle Amazon Silk browser iPhone announcement Bathroom Break: 'Jedi Kittens Strike Back' Episode 913 Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

Personal Capital: Mint for rich people

Pity the "affluent Americans." With financial futures too complex to be forecast or planned by Quicken or Mint, but with insufficient resources to get top-flight financial planning from a wealth management firm like Goldman Sachs, these (approximately) 15 million households are woefully underserved.

That's the start of the pitch from Personal Capital, a new financial adviser firm with a strong, free online financial management app. The founders I talked with, ex-Intuit execs Bill Harris and Jim Del Favero, told me that most financial planning tools just don't sell. Harris said, "I built a tax planning tool twice. It sold practically zero, both times."

So he's trying to build instead a "complete solution" for the connected, sort-of-high-net-worth consumer: a product that gives Mint-like ease of use and information, but with a focus on giving these users grown-up insight. In particular, Personal Capital shows you your investment allocation across all your accounts, so you can see if you're, for example, too heavily invested in U.S. stocks vs. emerging market stocks, bonds, currencies, and so on.

The 404 898: Where we wish the economy had longer legs (podcast)

The number of the day is 0, brought to you by the United States economy and Jill Schlesinger, editor-at-large for CBS MoneyWatch.com and host of an Emmy-nominated podcast! Jill sits with us today and reveals her plan of attack on Suze Orman at the award ceremony.

She'll also give an update on the state of the economy, the financial implications for Yahoo ex-CEO Carol Bartz, and why the rich and poor have never been further apart.

Check out the video today to see our new Bathroom Break video segment, and afterward Jill will predict the content of President Obama's jobs speech tomorrow. Finally, we'll run through a quick listener-submitted Q&A about how to keep yourself above water on your mortgage, the exact definition of a "robosigner," and why it's never a good idea to draft your prenuptial agreement.

The 404 Digest for Episode 898

Dial Global's Jill Schlesinger nominated for Emmy! Yahoo fires Bartz as CEO, names CFO to fill void. Bank of America sued by U.S. Bancorp over mortgages. August jobs: Obama blew it. Check out Jill's podcast on CBS MoneyWatch.com. Add Jill on Twitter. Today's Bathroom Break: Never Ending Story.

Episode 898 Subscribe in iTunes (audio) | Subscribe in iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more

Gigantic coin achieves tilt-shift effect

To achieve a miniature, tilt-shift effect on subjects, one can typically rely on specialized lenses or miniature-styled programmed modes found in today's cameras. A Norwegian design studio called Skrekkogle has done the opposite with its Big Money Project.

Instead of "shrinking" a subject with special effects, they have created a massive 20:1 euro cent coin to make a subject appear small, like a miniature scale model, in comparison.

Skrekkogle's giant coin was available for sale at its Web site, but is, alas, currently out of stock. More pics below. … Read more

Gartner: 141 million to use mobile payments in 2011

The number of consumers paying for items via their mobile devices will shoot past 141 million this year, says new data out today from Gartner.

That figure is a 38.2 percent increase over 2010, when mobile-payment users hit 102.1 million. The amount of money generated via mobile payments is expected to reach $86.1 billion this year, up almost 76 percent from the $48.9 million seen last year.

The surge in mobile payments will come despite the slow adoption of mobile-payment technologies.

The mobile, retail, and financial industries have been rushing to roll out near-field communication (NFC) … Read more

Mint tweaks its personal-finance iPhone app

Mint, which makes a personal-finance app, is taking full advantage of the iPhone's geolocation features in an update to the application.

As soon as users spend some cash, they can open up their Mint app and input the amount spent. The app's geolocation feature finds all the merchants nearby to help users assign the expense to the respective establishment. As soon as the expenditure is logged, Mint automatically updates users' bank balances.

Though the addition is somewhat minor, Mint says it has been one of its users' top requests. That makes some sense. After a payment is made, … Read more

Personal finance spreadsheet

Vertex42 Money Manager is a free Excel spreadsheet template configured as a personal financial tool. However, unlike most free Excel templates, it's more than a single page of preconfigured cells and formulas. In fact, it's a full-featured financial planning, recording, and reporting tool that can help you keep track of everything from gifts to retirement savings. To use it, you must have Microsoft Excel 2003 or better.

We unzipped Vertex42 Money Manager's download and clicked it. Excel opened in protected mode with the template displaying the first sheet, the Help page, which serves as both the introduction … Read more

Manage your finances

iBank is a full-featured financial management app that can help you track bank and credit card accounts, keep an eye on your investment portfolio, generate a variety of reports, and help with budgeting and planning.

iBank's interface has a very Mac-like feel: a toolbar sits over two panes, one for sources on the left and one for a transaction register on the right. Unlike the previous version of iBank, transaction editing happens right in the register view, with drop-down tools for categories, splits, and memos, and you can perform calculations when entering amounts. The right pane is also where … Read more